Playing the hard map on 1.0.5. I really like all the changes from 1.0.4. I've survived up to the point where I can spam ex nihilo stone barrels and I have watermelons for food. I thought I read that you took out vanilla food? There are still wheat seeds and melon seeds in the quest rewards and one quests asks you to turn in wheat and seeds. If I didn't have melons right now, I'd still be pretty good on zombie jerky and spider eye soup, which would be fine. The terrain smasher from a reward quest really makes setting up a cobble gen a breeze and for getting tons of stone barrels for rain water collection, which I know you wish you could disable rain. It's too bad, I feel the same.
I was surprised all the vanilla wood/stone tools are nerfed to 2 durability. You should just disable them all together. I guess the wooden hoe with 2 uses is at least helpful for setting up your first farm. But man did it take forever to finally get a hatchet to cut down trees faster. Punching trees for hours is a real grind. Great map so far Iskandar!